by Suchet, John
His proposal, he relates, met with little support, the general reaction being that however much you tried to help Beethoven, he would ignore your goodwill and live exactly as he wished, in whatever degree of squalor that might be.
HOW STARKLY this account contrasts with the experience of another renowned composer, a Viennese, of a rather more shy disposition than the ebullient Rossini. In the same month as Rossini’s visit, Franz Schubert published his Eight Variations on a French Song for piano four hands, with a dedication to Beethoven. He agonised over whether he should personally give a copy to Beethoven, considering his own compositions to be unworthy. Finally he plucked up the courage to do so, but when he went to Beethoven’s lodgings the great man was out, so Schubert left it with the servant.
As far as is known, Schubert, whose admiration for Beethoven was such that on his deathbed he asked to be buried in a grave alongside Beethoven’s, met him only once, when Beethoven was on his deathbed, though even this is not certain.2
It was probably in the autumn of this year, 1822, that an extraordinary event occurred that has become one of the legends surrounding Beethoven’s life. It was related to Thayer, again some forty years after the event, by a lithographer named Blasius Höfel for whom Beethoven sat, so as with many other tales of eccentricity it might have become embellished over the years, but as with Rossini’s account there is no reason to doubt its authenticity.
One autumn evening Höfel was enjoying an early-evening drink in the tavern Zum Schleifen (‘At the Ribbon’) in the Vienna suburb of Wiener Neustadt. Among the party was the local Commissioner of Police. It was already dark when a police constable came to the tavern to find the Commissioner.
‘Sir,’ said the constable, ‘we have arrested someone for behaving in a suspicious manner. He won’t be quiet. He keeps on yelling that he is Beethoven. But he’s just a tramp. He’s in a moth-eaten old coat, no hat. He has no identity papers, there’s no way of finding out who he is. We’re not sure what to do.’
‘Keep him under arrest overnight,’ replied the Commissioner. ‘We’ll speak to him in the morning and find out who he is.’
But it did not end there. As the Commissioner told Höfel later, at eleven o’clock that night he was woken at home by a policeman who told him the man in custody would not quieten down, was still yelling that he was Beethoven, and was demanding that Anton Herzog, Musical Director in Wiener Neustadt, be called in to identify him.
The Commissioner decided he had better investigate. He went to Herzog’s house, woke him up, and asked him to accompany him to the police station. The Commissioner and Herzog were taken to the cell, and as soon as Herzog cast eyes on the tramp he exclaimed, ‘That is Beethoven!’
The Commissioner, no doubt congratulating himself that he had taken the matter seriously, ordered Beethoven’s immediate release. Herzog took him back to his own house, gave him the best room, assured him he would not be disturbed, and looked forward to seeing him for breakfast if he so wished, or if he preferred to sleep longer ...
The next day the local Mayor came to Herzog’s house to apologise in person to the renowned composer for his treatment at the hands of an over-zealous police officer, gave Beethoven his best coat and the mayoral carriage to transport him home.
By then everyone knew what had happened. The day before Beethoven had got up early in the morning, put on his threadbare old coat, forgotten to take a hat, and set out for what he intended to be a short walk. He reached the towpath on the Danube Canal and followed it. He walked on for hours.
By late afternoon he ended up at the canal basin at the Ungertor, a considerable distance from the city. He was totally lost and disorientated, and in a pitiful state having had nothing to eat all day. In this condition, tired, drawn, hungry, in tattered old clothes, he was seen by local people looking in at the windows of houses. They became suspicious and called the police.
A constable approached him and told him he was arresting him for behaving suspiciously.
‘But I am Beethoven.’
‘Of course you are. Why not? I’ll tell you what you are. You’re a tramp, and that Beethoven is no tramp.’ (‘Ein Lump sind Sie; so sieht der Beethoven nicht aus.’)
AND YET THROUGH all these traumas – ill-health, personal problems, one thing after another – he continued to compose. The Missa Solemnis was finally completed; he composed the three piano sonatas that were to be his last; he took up the Diabelli Variations3 again, and he was making notes for further compositions.
Then, out of the blue, in November 1822, he received a letter from St Petersburg. The writer of the letter was a Russian nobleman by the name of Nicolas Borisovich, Prince Galitzin, and the request he made of Beethoven – or, more accurately, Beethoven’s positive response – has earned the Prince his place in musical history. He asked Beethoven if he would consent to compose one, two, or three new quartets, for which he would pay Beethoven whatever he, Beethoven, considered appropriate.
This was an unexpected stroke of luck for Beethoven, because in letters he wrote earlier in the year he said that he was considering composing string quartets, maybe as many as three. Now he could not only get on with composing them, he would be paid as well.
But once again – as with the Diabelli Variations and the Missa Solemnis – he put the quartets to one side, because quite simply he got a more attractive offer. There was another composition he had begun making sketches for in the autumn of the previous year. That’s a slight understatement. You could say this was a composition that had been on his mind, and slowly germinating, since he briefly attended lectures on the German philosopher Immanuel Kant at the University of Bonn as a teenager, and acquired a volume of poetry by the German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller.
He had kept that volume of poetry with him, always intending to set to music a poem that particularly appealed to him, ‘An die Freude’ (‘Ode to Joy’). By 1822 he was beginning to think that maybe a symphony would be the appropriate way to go about it. No composer, not Mozart, Haydn, nor anyone else, had ever incorporated words – spoken or sung – into a symphony. If this was the way forward, then it was going to be a radical departure from any previous symphony, and from what a symphony was generally accepted to be.
The first indication that he intended writing a new symphony (though there is no indication yet that it would include voices), came in a letter he wrote to his friend and helper Ferdinand Ries, now based in London, on 6 July 1822: ‘Have you any idea what fee the Harmony Society 4 would offer me for a grand symphony?’
Ries evidently replied with good news, because on 20 December, Beethoven wrote to Ries accepting the Society’s relatively low offer of £50. There was history between Beethoven and the Philharmonic Society. In 1815 the Society had paid Beethoven 75 guineas for three overtures. He provided them with three overtures that had already been performed, whereas they were expecting new works, and the directors of the Society were disappointed with their quality.5
This time, therefore, the offer was just £50, and one suspects that even that amount was offered with some reluctance. They cannot have known that the work with which their name would forever be associated would redefine the symphony and represent the pinnacle of Beethoven’s achievement.
IT TOOK BEETHOVEN well over a year to bring his Ninth Symphony to fruition, the biggest problem being how to introduce the voices in the final movement. Aware of how ground-breaking this final movement would be, he sketched then rejected several ideas, before deciding to quote the theme from each of the preceding three movements, but rejecting it before it could be completed. A solo bass voice then articulates in words the desire to abandon these sounds in favour of more pleasing and joyful tones. The final movement therefore breaks free and takes flight. The mind of a genius at work.
By early 1824 the Ninth Symphony was complete. Now for the easy part: securing a theatre and date for the first performance. Easy, because word had spread in Vienna that its most celebrated composer was working intensivel
y on a new symphony, his first for over ten years, and that it was going to be radically different. The theatre managers of Vienna were falling over themselves to win the concert for their theatre.
Easy? Nothing is ever easy where Beethoven is concerned. For reasons known only to him – possibly no more than a desire to spite the Viennese musical establishment – he decided he wanted his new symphony to be given its premiere in Berlin.
Berlin? That musical establishment was dumbstruck. Why Berlin? Their bewilderment was certainly laced with anger. Not only would it mean none of Vienna’s musicians would be involved, but to add insult to injury it awarded the prize of a new Beethoven work to the capital of Prussia, a militaristic nation the Austrians at best treated with suspicion, at worst hated, whose army they had faced on the battlefield and would do again.
The work would redefine the symphony and represent the pinnacle of Beethoven’s achievement
When they realised Beethoven was serious – the general manager of the Berlin Theatre was delighted to accept his proposal – they swallowed their pride and anger, and decided to write an open letter to their most famous musical son.
In wonderfully overblown language, no fewer than thirty illustrious musical names implored Beethoven, whose ‘name and creations belong to all contemporaneous humanity and every country which opens a susceptible bosom to art’, to recognise that ‘it is Austria which is best entitled to claim him as her own’, along with Mozart and Haydn, ‘the sacred triad in which these names and yours glow as the symbol of the highest within the spiritual realm of tones [which] sprang from the soil of their fatherland’.
They continued:
We beg you to withhold no longer ... a performance of the latest masterwork of your hands ... We know that a new flower glows in the garland of your glorious, still unequalled symphonies ... Do not any longer disappoint the general expectations! ... Do not allow these, your latest offspring, some day to appear perhaps as foreigners in their place of birth, introduced perhaps by persons to whom you and your mind are alien! Appear soon among your friends, your admirers, your venerators!
Well, Beethoven was as susceptible to flattery as any man. ‘[The letter] is very beautiful! – it rejoices me greatly!’ he wrote.
That small hurdle cleared, the problems really now did start.
Beethoven insisted on making the final decision on every aspect of the concert – the venue, the time, the programme, selection of musicians and singers, copying of the musical parts, rehearsal timings, and even the price of seats. All of which would have been fine, if he had been able to make up his mind on any of it.
Time was running short. Spring would soon give way to summer, and the concert season end. It would take at least three weeks to prepare for the concert – rehearsals and posters printed – and the single most important decision had still not been taken. The venue.
The obvious choice was the Theater an der Wien, which had seen so many of Beethoven’s works premiered. Baron Braun was long since gone, and the current manager, Count Palffy, was known to be enthusiastic about Beethoven’s music. It would also be simpler and quicker to arrange dates with the Theater an der Wien than with the bureaucracy of the imperial court theatres.
But there was a problem. Beethoven loathed Palffy. It dated back some years, to when Beethoven was giving a recital in the salon of one of his patrons. Palffy was in the small audience, carrying on a conversation with a lady. Beethoven, having tried several times to silence him, finally stopped playing, shouted, ‘I will not play for pigs!’ – and stormed out.
It was probably in revenge that Beethoven now demanded a change of conductor and leader if the concert was to be held at the Theater an der Wien. Palffy was surprisingly accommodating. He agreed to allow Michael Umlauf to conduct, in place of the theatre’s resident musical director, and Beethoven’s friend Ignaz Schuppanzigh to lead instead of the resident leader. On top of that, Palffy offered Beethoven the theatre, staff, musicians, as many rehearsals as he wanted, at the price of a mere 1200 florins, allowing him to keep all profits.
It was a remarkably generous offer, and Beethoven’s friends and colleagues were delighted that at least the problem over the venue had been resolved.
But Beethoven turned it down. Back to square one.
THERE WAS AN underlying issue that was making matters infinitely more difficult than they needed to be. There were essentially two camps operating on Beethoven’s behalf. The one that was negotiating with Palffy was made up of patrons and musicians. But Beethoven was convinced they were not to be trusted, so he authorised his brother Johann and nephew Karl to make secret overtures to other theatres – Johann, who had business experience but no knowledge of the world of music, and Karl, now aged seventeen, with no knowledge of anything.
The first group, after Beethoven’s rejection of Palffy’s offer, entered into talks with the manager of the Theater am Kärntnertor, one of the imperial court theatres. This prompted Palffy to improve his offer, dropping the price for the Theater an der Wien to 1000 florins. He also offered a selection of dates: 22, 23 and 24 March.
This time Beethoven agreed, no doubt to a collective sigh of relief from the first group. But unknown to them, Beethoven’s brother and nephew were negotiating with a third theatre – a totally inappropriate venue, being more a hall than a theatre and seating only five hundred people.
Days, weeks, were passing, and nobody was getting anywhere. Finally, confronted with reality, Beethoven made the only sensible decision: he abandoned the concert. There would be no performance of his Ninth Symphony.
Then he changed his mind again. The concert would be held in the Kärntnertor (whose resident orchestra he had described not long before as being worse than a musical clock). Palffy made one last desperate bid. Beethoven could have the Wien for nothing. But this time Beethoven’s mind was made up, and he did not change it again.
His Ninth Symphony would receive its premiere at the Kärntnertor on Friday, 7 May.
NOW THE SOLOISTS needed to be selected, and fast. The females were relatively straightforward. Everybody agreed on the soprano Henriette Sontag, and the contralto Karoline Unger. The men were more of a problem. The preferred tenor claimed the part was too low for his voice. The bass claimed the part was too high and impossibly hard.
Choices were finally made, singers selected, chorus members named, with an orchestral force of 24 violins, 10 violas, 12 cellos and basses, and double the number of woodwind. This, by the standards of the day, was an enormous line-up, but everybody understood that with this new symphony, they were dealing with something quite out of the ordinary.
Then Beethoven dropped a bombshell. He said he would conduct. Profoundly deaf, unable to hear normal conversation, unable to hear musical sounds, even with his ear to an ear trumpet held on the piano keys, he insisted on conducting the most complex and demanding score he had ever written.
Hurriedly a plan was put into operation – a cunning ruse. Yes, said the concert organisers, of course he would conduct, who else could possibly conduct such a work but its creator? Purely, though, as a back-up, for no other reason than to make sure everything went smoothly, Michael Umlauf would be on stage with him. Michael Umlauf, the well-known conductor. But don’t worry, Herr Beethoven, he won’t get in your way. Beethoven acquiesced.
Given the shortness of time, there could be only two full rehearsals. The first was a disaster, the second worse. The problem was the solo singers. They complained that their parts were simply impossible. They told Beethoven he did not understand the human voice.
Beethoven was in no mood to compromise. He told them to sing exactly what he had written. Karoline Unger, the contralto, threw a tantrum. To Beethoven’s face, she called him ‘a tyrant over all the vocal organs’, and turning to her colleagues said, ‘Well then, we must go on torturing ourselves in the name of God!’
The bass soloist went one further. At the last minute, declaring his part was impossibly high, he pulled out. He was replaced, proba
bly, by a member of the chorus who was familiar with the part from rehearsals.
In secret the four soloists made a pact. At the concert they would not try for notes they were doubtful of reaching, and they simply would not sing impossibly difficult passages. Beethoven was deaf anyway, he wouldn’t know.
The stage was set for a farcical first performance of the most important, demanding, complex, innovative work Beethoven had ever composed.
THE THEATER am Kärntnertor was almost full, which was gratifying, but it was the wrong audience. The concert season was all but over, and Vienna was basking in early-summer warmth. The nobility, aristocrats, patrons of the arts, had left the city for their country residences.
A genuine disappointment for Beethoven was that the royal box was empty. Beethoven had personally gone to the Hofburg Palace to invite members of the imperial royal family. His most loyal supporter, Archduke Rudolph, was away in Olmütz. Beethoven rather hoped the Emperor himself, with the Empress, would attend. But the empty royal box spoke of an unwillingness to be associated with disaster.
Beethoven’s small circle of close friends was there. He no doubt watched with sadness as his old friend and drinking partner Nikolaus Zmeskall was carried to his seat on a sedan chair because of crippling gout that had left him bedridden.
We can assume a ripple of laughter (no need to stifle it, he can’t hear), as Beethoven, a pace or two in front of Umlauf, walked to the stage and people noticed that he was wearing a green frock coat. Black was de rigueur, but Beethoven did not own the ‘correct’ garment. He was otherwise appropriately dressed: white cravat with waistcoat, black breeches, black silk stockings, and shoes with buckles.